Jeff Bridges leads an all star cast in The Amateurs. As Andy, the small town idea man, he convinces the locals to join him in making an amateur porno film. That's an unusual plan for anybody, let alone an A-list actor.
Bridges One of The Amateurs
"Like most of the movies I get involved with, I resist it for as long as possible," said Bridges. "I really try to figure out why I shouldn’t do it and this one had plenty of reasons not to do it. The reason that attracted me to it in the first place is that it was so unusual. I hadn’t ever read a script like this and it was tempting to put the porn aspect and this heartfelt kind of sweetness of Frank Capra and put those two things together and I thought that was really interesting, very ambitious."
The Dude still needed some convincing though, particularly since this was the brainchild of a first time director. "I didn’t know if this guy who had never directed a film, who wrote the script would be able to pull it off. Also it seemed odd. I’d done movies in the past that have so many characters and I find as an audience it’s very hard to follow all these stories and you end up not caring about any of the people and I thought that would be the case in this one. They had these big speeches for each character. I said, 'God, you’re going to have to cut that down in order to edit the movie.' My representatives kept saying, 'No, you really should check it. You know you like the kind of freshness of it. Come on try it out.' I read it three or four times and finally I said, 'All right. I want you guys to organize a reading and I want you to be there to see how terrible this is and it’s not going to work at all.' So we sat at a big table like this and read the script and it just flew. It was great. Then that kind of swept me up."
The Amateurs
The Amateurs
After that, the film took two years, and several alternate titles, to get released. By then, Bridges was not even worried. "I didn’t really get all the ins and outs of why it didn’t get released. It was kind of very convoluted and I’m sure there are a lot of sides to all the stories but it wasn’t because of the nature of the film or anything like that. I think it was more business type stuff."
The material should not have been an issue, since the film is not really about pornography. "One of the themes that kind of runs through thing is about how important friendship is. I think one of the cool things about this movie is Mike Traeger and the producer Aaron Ryder are best friends. So that initial relationship and friendship kind of permeated the whole shooting of it, so I hope that people come away appreciating their own friendships."
The Amateurs has a limited release on December 7th.
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